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A wonderful walk through direct mail from Mailbox Merchants, like you’ve never seen before! 🙄

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Mailbox merchants especial junk mail review.

Here today on Brian J. Pombo Live. Welcome back, I’m Brian Pombo.

Today, it’s like every episode is brought to you by a very special sponsor happens to be the book that I wrote, 9 Ways to Amazon-Proof Your Business. If you’re looking to explode your business. And at once I’m really very simple way to understand how to really make yourself completely different in the marketplace.

Check out, 9 Ways to Amazon-Proof Your Business, you can get a free copy at AmazonProofBook.com.

Now, this is a piece of junk mail that I received I lovingly referred to as junk mail, it’s direct mail. And when we’re talking about business, a great way to reach people is still through physical snail mail, and junk mail services.

This is, I’m going to go through in the moment I can already see some of the stuff I’m going to talk about just from the outside in. But this comes folded in my mailbox just like so it is delivered that this is a there’s a group called, Mailbox Merchants serving greater Josephine County.

This is September 29, 2020 edition for Josephine County in Oregon, in the great state of Oregon.

Now, I’m going to go through and kind of show you piece by piece, I’m not going to review every last piece of it. But I’ll go through some of the things that are standing out to me. First off, right off the bat, this is always a nice thing. And this is a kind of a bundle. So you buy into something like this, you could reach these guys over at mailbox merchants.com. Okay, there’s a lot of groups like this locally, where you’ll receive a whole bunch of ads all at once.

This is something that you could buy into, it’s sometimes an inexpensive way to be able to deliver things to people. And it’s a chance for people that are already kind of looking at something because everyone knows that this is advertisements. So once they’re looking at it, you know you’re getting people who are at least have some passing interest in advertisements, or at least are paying attention.

A lot of people take this it’s to be understood, they take this, it goes most people probably go straight in the garbage straight in the burn pile, depending on where you live. Here is a nice little envelope that they stick in with all this other newspaper stuff. And this is one thing I like to point out. These are great. And you know that this came from these guys.

It’s technically from AARP. But it came in an envelope. So it makes it appear as though it’s a piece of your mail that’s gotten stuck inside because that’s sometimes happens to is your mail, your regular mail. So people people pay attention to this just because of the cover that it has. But since it has no postage of its own, has no address on it. We know for certain that this came in this package now.

AARP will just open this puppy up.

Okay, let’s see, see how it looks. It’s always good to look at how this is set up. People tend to open their mail like this, they make it easier for you by not even sealing it. I’m pretty sure that’s purposeful. It’s a lot easier to get into. First thing you see.

Free insert, free insulated trunk organizer as a special thank you for AARP. So they got the bonus right up front for sign up for AARP, little ad for that little mail back business reply mail, no postage necessary.

So if I want to sign up, make it easy, especially if I’m a older person, it may be easier for me just to send this in rather than going online and trying to figure out all that. Not that you have to be old to be part of AARP, but they do play towards older numbers, age groups.

And here’s the actual form that you fill out. Notice the type. They have a typewriter type on there, too. It plays more towards older audiences.

At least it’s believed to value members, so sign up.

Yes, I want to join or renew AARP. So it’s a great way for them to get attention, little tear off thing. Pop in the envelope, stick it in the mail.

Simple, easy, straightforward.

Pretty good job. I bet they do pretty well with something like this, this is actually pretty well thought out in terms of AARP they aren’t normally that thoughtful. You got to realize what’s coming in with something like this, that hits all the mailboxes, that you’re not going to get the same type of you’re not going to get just your group, you’re going to get a whole bunch of people who are not of the age group who aren’t even thinking about AARP or are interested in it.

Okay, so look at the rest of this.

Hmm. So you open this up, it’s it’s all ads, I mean, just top to bottom, it’s all ads. And what I like to look for are items that stand out that look a little bit different, that get your attention.

One thing here they got the QR code.

This is specifically for checks on limited. So get your box of checks, they’ve been advertising checks in the mail forever, it must work otherwise they wouldn’t do it. But here you go. You get up QR code code.

Nowadays, when these things first came out, they were tough because you had to download an app to get them. Now you just take a picture with your phone and all the phones will automatically give you the option to go to whatever website that this little code matches.

Okay, we also have here, this is a Domino’s Pizza, and then a local ad with some with some little deals down here, online order code and so forth. So they have some ways to be able to track this to see how well it’s doing.

I don’t in the end, when it comes to direct mail, it really depends on your numbers and how you’re tracking. I don’t know how well this does for them. Just on the surface. It looks like every other ad. It really does. I i zoom past this immediately. Now if I was really interested in getting Domino’s Pizza on a regular basis, then I’d look here and see if they had any good deals.

Other than that I would go straight by it doesn’t mean it does, it isn’t an ad that works.

Hopefully they’re watching to be able to see the tracking on this to see if it actually works. And we’ve got a bunch of glossy ads in here.

Here’s one for Dish Network. Pretty standard. Nothing really stands out on there, at least for me. Both sides.

Yeah, get all this stuff 59.99 a month. I mean, it’s really a play toward the price end of things. I don’t know whether that’s a good deal or not.

Let’s get rid of that spectrum, almost an identical ad set that’s 44.99 on both sides, and it opens up and says the same things.

What’s the big headline the big headlines, the number the amount, they’re just playing, trying to get you to get you to purchase the cheaper version. Now let’s see here. Arby’s, nother very similar to the Domino’s ad, you’ve got just the coupons on the bottom. I imagine the amount of people they have returned the coupons is how well they they see this as dueling out there.

And they got coupons on the back.

All for Arby’s, all advertising, I don’t even see anything that I would consider brand new from them. I think these are pretty much their standard fare, there might be one or two things that are specialized. But all the food ads look identical.

Here’s Subway, same exact layout, here’s the here’s the it’s footlong season, Game Day favorites. So they’re playing toward a NFL opening back up. So get yourself a footlong you have the coupons on the bottom and a bunch of coupons on back. Just pretty straightforward stuff.

You’re either interested or not.

And these guys have been advertising, all of these. All of these restaurants have been advertising in this particular mailer for a while I keep an eye out so that it must be valuable to them or they must see it as somewhat valuable.

Here’s a slightly different thing. Got a great big ad on this side with a giant burger for Burger King.

Take a bite of real flavor.

And just a bunch of coupons, a bunch of coupons.

If you’re involved with any type of local business where you do this form of advertising, I’d love to hear how well it works out for you. Leave a comment and we’ll we’ll read it on on the air here. Carl’s Jr. identical. You got the giant burger one side. Bunch of coupons on the back.

McDonald’s. Big Picture coupons. Flip it over big picture coupons.

Papa Murphy’s same thing big picture coupons, right? Kind of see the the trend here and that’s that’s all good. If it works.

What would work better for any of these people is to do something just slightly different. You do something slightly different than everybody else you’ll stand out.

People will stop split second longer on your ad. And that split second will make a difference in how well you do as long as you have a decent offer.

There’s Jiffy Lube. almost identical to the food.

They got that they got that big ad. The big, big pushes for the price. Joint 9.95 a bunch of coupons on here.

Got a smaller ad for tin super premium hand rolled cigars inside of this Applebee’s, same thing, kind of a big ad with some coupons. Pretty boring.

All this stuff’s pretty boring.

I think AARP pretty much to get there in terms of having something that stands out, but also a standard thing that I’ve seen them do often enough. So I would think that it’s probably relatively profitable. They don’t need a whole lot to be profitable. They get they have so many members have so many direct mail campaigns.

I don’t even know how closely they pay attention to those type of things. It’s a you know if it’s valuable On a national or international level, they’ll keep doing it. And it doesn’t necessarily need to be profitable here locally or with this particular vendor.

So hopefully that gives you a little bit of an idea of things to look for. If you’re using direct mail, things you might want to do things you might not want to do. But most important is to track if you’re not tracking it.

You don’t know whether it’s doing any good. You don’t just send out just a blanket thing with Hey, look at me, come do this, come do that. If you’re not if you don’t have something you can track it by that particular ad by you’re not going to know whether the ad was profitable or not.

And if you can’t track whether the ad was profitable, it probably isn’t. I hate to tell you, probably not. So, hopefully that’s helpful. We’ll be back tomorrow night.

You have a great one. In the meantime, get out there and let the magic happen.